There’s just no escaping Ireland’s Trump this week

INESCAPABLE that’s what it is. Everywhere you turn this week he’ll be looking right back at you. Big Brother with a buzz cut. It’s almost as much about him watching you as you watching him.

To those of us who don’t get it, his ubiquity this week is a disconcerting experience. The whole phenomenon has been. He sprung up as if from nowhere and in the space of five years seemingly conquered the world.

That he conquered the world long before capturing his first belt is the really curious part of it to a lot of us. Conor McGregor is Conor McGregor because of who he is – or rather who he portrays himself to be – as much as because of what he has done or can do.

The man is obviously talented – his schtick wouldn’t work if he wasn’t – but the schtick is what’s made him a star not the talent. It’s the bravado and the bullshit that sells him as much as anything else, if it wasn’t he wouldn’t do it.

Whatever else he might be McGregor is a shrewd business man. The contest with Mayweather this weekend in Las Vegas is pure, uncut show business. To a certain extent all professional sport is, although usually with a patina of tradition and a smattering of dignity.

What McGregor has done is cut through the artifice. In a world where authenticity is valued incredibly highly, McGregor’s bet is that his conspicuous avarice will appeal for the simple reason that it’s believable. Of course he’s doing it for the money. Why else would he be doing it?

On a certain level McGregor comes across as authentic – to his fans he certainly does. Just how genuine that authenticity is, is open to question. The whole thing is hugely reminiscent of Donald Trump.

Trump gets credit – or did for a long time at least – for ‘telling it like it is’. That he was spewing a load of ill-informed bullshit was sorta irrelevant. It may have been bullshit, but he believed it, at least when he was saying it.

In his book, The Art of the Deal, Trump described it as ‘truthful hyperbole’.

“The final key to the way I promote is bravado,” he wrote.

“I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular.” That’s probably the single most insightful thing Trump has ever said. That it’s a how-to guide for grift tells you all you need to know about the present occupant of the White House. McGregor might not be grifting people – it’s showbiz not a ponzi scheme like Trump University – but he is engaging in truthful hyperbole. This is no clash of the titans. This is a clash between a man retired for the last two years and a man without a single professional boxing match under his belt. All that glitters isn’t gold.

As it goes that’s fine. If people want to watch him and Floyd Mayweather this weekend and pay handsomely for the right then more power to them. Where it becomes troubling is the means by which McGregor has chosen to portray himself.

Even more troubling than that is that the McGregor persona finds approval with a lot of young men (and presumably some young women too). The face McGregor shows the world is stunningly retrograde.

The promotional tour he undertook with Mayweather to promote the fight was nothing short of disgraceful. During the course of the tour he was rightly castigated for what were deemed by many to be sexist and racist comments – not to mention for a general coarsening of public discourse.

In an attempt to deflect from the initial accusations of racism – when he told a black man in the United States to “dance for me, boy” – he made further crass and demeaning comments. You may well say – and his defenders probably would – that we shouldn’t take what he says so seriously. That it’s all in the game. That McGregor is no racist. That at worst he’s guilty of a lack of cultural understanding. That he didn’t realise what he was saying.

That cuts very little dice with us. Either McGregor believes what he says or he’s simply willing to say it on television in order to sell tickets and subscriptions. Even if you’re inclined to believe it’s all an act – as we are – that doesn’t excuse it.

If anything saying hurtful, racist things for the purpose of self-enrichment is, in our view, a far more venal thing than actually holding those beliefs in the first place. Knowing better and saying them anyway is about as low as you can get. McGregor might be in on the stunt, most of his fans might be, but not everybody will be. It’s much too dangerous to play games the way McGregor has been recently. There’s much more at stake than his personal bank balance and pay-per-view TV.